“It’s not difficult to understand you. Of course you’re scared of driving if your mother used to careen around like the fucking teacups ride. People drive their cars with one hand, scrolling on their phones like nothing can happen to them. Meanwhile, they’re terrified of some statistically improbable event like a shark attack on their vacation to Hawaii. The real dangers are all around you all the time.”
“Maybe even in the car with you right now,” Mara says, throwing me another quick look, this time with a hint of mischief in it.
“Are you talking about me or about yourself?” I ask her. “You’ve gotten me in more trouble than I’ve caused for you.”
“You think I’m a threat to you?” Mara says, her fingertips lightly caressing the wheel as she turns, already knowing the way to my house.
“You threaten everything I thought I knew, and everything I believed.”
We’ve left all the other cars behind us, alone on the long, winding drive up to Seacliff. She’s speeding up, taking the curves with confidence. She looks sexy behind the wheel of my car, wearing the suede moto jacket I bought for her. Her skin and hair glows with health. Even her nails look less ragged—she hasn’t been biting them as much.
Mara is flourishing under my care. Becoming more beautiful, more powerful by the day.
I’m doing this. I’m changing her.
“You like it,” Mara says. “You can’t get enough of it.”
I seize her face and force her to kiss me, pulling her eyes away while the car flies along the road.
She gasps as I let go of her, gripping the wheel tight once more.
“At first it was against my will,” I tell her. “But now I’m all in. I have to have you. Even if it blows up my life.”
Mara pulls into my driveway, the towering facade of Seacliff looming over us. The weathered dark stone is cave-like, as if the house is just more of the cliff, jutting up against the sky.
“Do you like this house?” I ask Mara.
She tilts her head to the side, examining it anew.
“It suits you,” she says. “On the outside: stark and intimidating. On the inside … surprisingly beautiful.”
“You haven’t even seen all of it yet.”
“I know,” she says, looking at me, not the house.
I take her hand.
“Come this way.”
I lead her around the side of the house, on the stone path that winds through thick hedges of wisteria long past their bloom. The private entrance is sheltered from all sides, so no one but my father could see who was coming and going.
I open his office door.
Mara steps inside first, looking all around her.
I follow her in.
The office has been destroyed. Books torn down from the shelves, their pages ripped out and scattered all around. The desk hacked to pieces with a hatchet. The artwork smashed where it hung on the wall. Even the sofa and chairs slashed open, stuffing hanging out like entrails.
Mara stares, mouth open.
Hesitantly, she approaches the desk, drawing her fingertip across its scarred and broken top, leaving a trail in the dust.
“Did you do this?” she asks.
“Yes. The night my father died.”
“Did you … were you the one who killed him?”
“No. That’s why I was angry. He was gone, with too many things left unsaid and unanswered.”
“What happened to him?”
“He had a degenerative kidney disease. I knew it was coming, but it happened sooner than I expected. Then I was angry at myself. There’s no closure from the dead.”
Mara gazes at the photographs hung on the wall, the images distorted by the shattered glass in each frame.
Unerringly, she finds the one of my father. He’s standing on a windswept hilltop in New Zealand, wearing his hunting jacket, his rifle over his shoulder. His black hair and beard immaculately groomed despite the rustic setting.
Mara is drawn to the figure next to him. A man with hair and eyes as dark as my father’s, but a much more youthful face.
“Is that …” Mara squints through the spiderweb of glass. “Do you have a brother?”
“That’s my uncle. He was twelve years younger than my father. Almost as close to me in age.”
Mara turns, understanding that this photograph is the reason I brought her in here.
“He looks just like you.”
“That’s not the only thing we had in common.”
She crosses the detritus blanketing the floor, her boots crunching on splinters of wood and glass. Sinking down onto the slashed sofa, she says, “Tell me everything.”
I sit next to her, my weight causing her to slide closer until her thigh rests against mine.
“My uncle Ruben was the only person my father ever loved. My grandparents had him accidentally, late in life. He was wild and unruly, and they didn’t know what to do with him. My father was the only person he would listen to, at least some of the time.”
Mara sits up straight, hands clasped in front of her, eyes fixed on my face, like a child enthralled by a fairy tale.
“My family’s money came from hotels and breweries, but by the time Ruben came along, most of it had been parceled out or frittered away, so the Blackwells were no longer truly rich. Meaning, my grandparents still lived well, but there was only a modest trust fund waiting for their sons. My father used his to start his venture capital firm. He offered Ruben a job, but Ruben didn’t want it. He waited till he turned twenty-one, got his money, then fucked off to LA to spend it. Around that same time, my father married my mother.”
Mara interrupts, “How did they meet?”
“Have you ever read The Great Gatsby?”
Mara nods.
“It was like that. She was from a level of wealth that made the Blackwells look poor. My father wanted her from the moment he laid eyes on her. She was very beautiful, but innocent and sheltered. Her parents had full control over her. My father had to impress them first to get access to her. When his company went public, he donated six million to the Bay Area Youth Center, her mother’s foundation. That’s how he got an invitation to one of their dinner parties, so he could start the process of seducing their daughter.”
“Do you have a picture of her?” Mara asks.
“Upstairs. There’s none in here.”